


Grasp

by Memelock



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, main character is also here but just a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 17:20:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20660879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memelock/pseuds/Memelock
Summary: Sylvain is a ladder for other people to climb. Felix prefers to keep his feet on the ground.





	1. Academy

**Author's Note:**

> You may notice some scenes that remind you of support conversations, and that’s because I took a few of those and reimagined them. This is a mindlessly self-indulgent series of vignettes that hopefully someone else out there will slog through, I’m begging you.

Felix’s heart is a stone, heavy and inanimate. Rain pounds on the umbrella numbly held over his head and soaks into the ground below him, making him sink where he stands into the dirt. The dirt where Glenn is, somewhere in Duscur. Can a wound be considered re-opened if it never stopped bleeding?

Mourners cover the coffin in the last few handfuls of sopping mud, wiping their palms, surreptitiously or not, in handkerchiefs far too insubstantial to belong to anyone but nobles. The only face in the crowd that doesn’t make Felix want to be sick is Sylvain’s, standing to his right. He’s dry as a bone beneath his own umbrella aside from his dirty hands, slightly separated from Miklan as though he’s embarrassed he’s there. Appearing with a living brother, however awful, at a dead brother’s funeral could be seen by some as a faux pas, Felix supposes. But what does he care.

After the ceremony, attendees disperse. Some talk in small groups, away from the grave and Rodrigue’s remaining standoffish son; others hurry to get out of the rain and into the castle on the Fraldarius estate. Felix remains without the umbrella he sent back with his father, standing motionless and unfeeling until he is soaked through to the skin and even the most lingering of the stragglers is gone. Too long, probably, but it’s not as though anyone is looking for him. Certainly not his father. He should be getting back regardless. 

Even in the rain, even partially obscured by an umbrella, the red blur is easy to spot. Felix isn’t sure he’s ready for Sylvain’s attention so he gets close enough to see the face of the girl he’s talking to and then stops. Neither notices him; he’s mostly obscured by a tree, a few steps behind Sylvain the way he always is.

“…but even on a day like today, your beauty is as radiant as the sun.” The girl is blushing, receptive as a flower whose petals bloom at the touch of a finger. “I’m sure you could chase these clouds away if you wanted to.”

“Maybe for _you_ I would.” Stamen rising, pollen-coated, and Sylvain the honeybee. Felix’s hands are curling into fists.

“I’d never ask something like that of someone as delicate as you are.” They’re close together under the umbrella, staying mostly dry. “Why don’t you take this with you —” passes her the shaft “ — and I’ll just have to hope I'll see you at the estate.”

She takes it, brushing her fingers with intention against his. Felix sees him let go and loosens his grip on himself a little. “Oh, won’t you walk me up there yourself?”

“I wish I could.” He shakes his head, weight of regret, hair already dampening for the girl has moved the umbrella much farther over her own head. “See you there, beautiful. And if not — see you in my dreams.”

Her flush is striking even in the dreary light, and she blows a kiss to Sylvain before turning toward the castle. The castle where Glenn used to live. She’s out of sight quickly in the dense rain and Sylvain drops the hand he waved after her.

“Is that how you’ll act at my funeral?” Felix steps out from behind the tree, but his friend doesn’t seem surprised at all to turn and find him there. His hair is quickly soaking, turning auburn and sticking to his face.

“I won’t be at your funeral, Felix, remember?” he says, voice earnest. “I’ll die too.”

Felix rolls his eyes. “That was a promise we made when we were kids, not fate.”

Sylvain shrugs. “It could be if we want it to be.” Looks him up and down. “Aren’t you cold?”

Yes, maybe, not as cold as Glenn. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. How could you be?”

“I am. I have to be.”

Sylvain’s brows knit, not something Felix is used to seeing. “You don’t.” Pause. “Do you want to… go somewhere? For a while?”

Does he? “Where would we go?”

He shrugs. “Wherever. Somewhere that’s not in the rain but not home.”

_Not home_. Felix nods, and then like always he follows Sylvain. He leads them, beacon of red hair and 15-year-old height, to a large felled tree that hangs suspended just high enough to sit under, hunched over and uncomfortable. The ground is wet beneath Felix, but he doesn’t mind or maybe just doesn’t notice. His cloak drips.

Sylvain is silent, head settled on his arms crossed over his knees. He’s looking at Felix but Felix doesn’t look back. He doesn’t have to bend as much to fit beneath the tree, so his shoulders droop and his elbows rest on his legs folded underneath him and his heart weighs in his chest. “Do you miss him?”

Felix shrugs. There’s a lot of ground to cover to answer that question — a brother who was nasty when present and distant when absent, a father with a clear preference. “It’s not like he was always around before.”

“Felix,” he snaps, “look at me.” 

Just like he had to listen to Glenn because he was older, he has to listen to Sylvain now — the natural order. “What?”

His eyes look dark in the shadow of the tree trunk, concerned. “What is with you? A few days ago you were…” He trails off. Felix remembers, seeing his brother’s empty armor, collapsing in tears, inconsolable — _crybaby_, Sylvain used to call him, not meanly. “I can tell something is going on. I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if Miklan…” Another stillborn sentence. Maybe if he didn’t say “died” Glenn could come back.

“Miklan’s awful,” he says, disdainfully.

“Glenn too,” Sylvain retorts.

“Not like Miklan.” No one Felix knows is awful like Miklan, thank the goddess — wherever she is. “Glenn never tried to push me down a well. Or leave me on the side of a —”

“That’s enough.” His voice is hard but in a brittle way, not like steel but like glass that could shatter in an instant, with enough pressure. Felix is usually good at applying pressure but this time he somehow doesn’t want to. It passes with the rain. “Felix, I know you’re hurting. I want to help you — we’re friends, right? Friends help each other, give and take.”

He shakes his head. “Glenn used to give too. Not to us but everyone around him, for Faerghus. It should be obvious but he didn’t get much in return.”

More silence except for the rain and the now-chattering teeth inside his head. _Damn_. His father would be irritated to say the least if he got sick now of all times, while they needed to put up a strong front in the wake of the Duscur tragedy — Felix had tried to forget the leathered knuckles striking his face after Glenn’s death. He must not have. “Felix… can I hold your hand for a minute?”

Something about this is off-putting; he and Sylvain had grown up together, held hands countless times as they raced through castle hallways and open fields on the Fraldarius and Gautier estates. He isn’t sure why he asked first this time but is also glad he hadn’t just reached out and taken it. “Why?”

“You just look like you could use something to hold onto.” Silence. Felix can’t, or won’t, look at him. “If you don’t say anything I’m just going to do it.”

_Don’t. Haven’t you noticed I’m not a girl? Fuck you._ All things he could say and doesn’t. Felix still isn’t looking at him but he can see movement in his peripheral vision as Sylvain stretches his arm. His hand is warmer and bigger than his. “You’re freezing. Your fingers are shaking.” To Felix’s intense embarrassment, almost but not quite intense enough to make him pull his arm back, Sylvain reaches for his other hand, clamps them between his own (big, warm) and holds them in a way that makes it extremely apparent that Felix’s fingers are, indeed, shaking. 

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Come on, you could have said that when I gave you the chance.” More silence, a few minutes this time. Felix listens to the rain and his heart beating in his ears and Sylvain’s breathing and tries to ignore how hot he feels despite the wet and cold and the dead brother. His fingers are —

“You’re still shaking a little.” Sylvain’s voice is low and Felix thinks he sounds a little shaky too. “Felix…”

The straw lands on the camel’s back and he can’t understand what he’s feeling so he pulls back, literally and figuratively, almost hitting his head hard on the tree trunk as he stands. “It’s going to be even colder soon. I’m going.” Sylvain looks like a wounded animal, staring up at Felix as though he’s holding a knife ready to deliver the fatal blow. “You can do what you want.”

* * *

They don’t see each other as often for a while after that. After Duscur, the Kingdom moves gradually into the type of chaos that can only happen at that scale. Noble houses have less time to make leisurely visits to each other, instead only utilizing allied castles as overnight stops for troops on their way to skirmishes. Even the usual business of betrothals and marriages has slowed to a crawl, as Ingrid happily tells Felix in one of the letters she sends during this time._ Maybe I’ll finally have the chance to be a knight._

Felix does. After two years of incessant rebellion against a father who seemed markedly disinterested in his actions at best and easy to rouse to anger at worst, he is sent forcefully to squire for a knight in the western region. Although he ships out with anger and unwillingness, it’s largely out of spite. As soon as he starts squiring, fighting and killing, he realizes he’s good at it, good for it. On the battlefield he doesn’t have time to see his brother’s face, laughing or sneering at him the way he almost always does otherwise. He keeps trying to push down the uncomfortable disappointment simmering at never getting anything from his father, and keeps exchanging letters sporadically with Ingrid as if that might make up for it. In a way, it does. They speak about Glenn often. Ingrid is someone he can share his grief with, at least a little.

_Sylvain wanted me to tell you he said hello, and he misses you._ He tosses that one into the fire he sits at with the other squires in the company. For two years they have been his main companions, and even though they share stories of loss and tragedy, commit acts of violence alongside each other, none of them ever reaches out to take Felix’s hand. He sometimes feels like he might shatter or sink if someone did.

Then, just as suddenly as he had been sent out, he is recalled. No question of whether he would like to leave the knight’s service, or what he would like to do instead, just an envoy from his father sent to retrieve him. Like a parcel he is delivered to the Fraldarius estate and immediately packed up again, shipped off to the Officers’ Academy at Garreg Mach. Ingrid is there, and Dimitri with faithful to a fault Dedue, and a lot of people he doesn’t know at all and maybe never will.

And Sylvain. As Felix is unpacking his few possessions into his dormitory, he hears a familiar voice at the door and suddenly there he is. After almost four years of little contact, he’s almost surprised at how easy it is to recognize him.

“Wow, Felix, you look really different.” It’s true he’s grown a bit and his hair is longer now, tied up to keep out of a face that is much harder and more angular, but Sylvain’s gaze is a little more piercing than it might be if he was just talking about his physical appearance. For his part, Sylvain is even taller than Felix remembers and almost painful to look at in his handsomeness. His hair is a darker red but his hands are still large and, as Sylvain embraces him, sliding one into Felix’s hair and one across his back, Felix can feel they’re still warm too.

He lets Sylvain hold him for a moment, half reciprocating half uncertain, then steps back. “You do too.”

Sylvain shakes his head, artfully tousled auburn hair shining just a little in the light. “Not like you. You look… you look like a different person. If I’m being honest, you remind me a little more of Glenn than you ever did before.”

Felix shrugs. “We are related. Or we were.”

“Still are.” Sylvain looks around the room as if he’s seeing it for the first time. “Is this all the stuff you have?”

He nods. “Life as a squire doesn’t lend itself to a lot of possessions. Not like being the heir to a noble house does, anyway.”

“You’re an heir too, like it or not.”

“Tell that to my father.”

Sylvain has the grace to look a little embarrassed. “I saw your father while you were away, a few times. He’s really put aside a lot of… well, everything that was going on after Glenn died. You might want to reach out to him.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Felix says curtly. “So what brings you to the Academy?”

“Same thing as you, probably. My dad wanted me here.” He stretches, putting his hands behind his head in that way he has. “Plus I have to make a move on that gorgeous new professor. Have you seen them yet? I mean, wow.”

Felix scoffs and rolls his eyes. Same old Sylvain. As the weeks roll by, it’s easier and easier to fall back into the way things have always been.

* * *

He doesn’t know what time it is but he knows it’s late when the knock comes. Felix isn’t sleeping, just lying in his bed in the dark, unable to close his eyes without seeing Sylvain’s face in the torchlight of the Gautier house’s labyrinthian lower levels, heartsick as he drives the lance into the beast that once had been Miklan. It had been Miklan again as the body collapsed.

Felix hates thinking of Sylvain like that, so vulnerable and in pain. To stem the tide this thought stirs he rises and opens the door, not bothering to light a candle of his own. Light pours in enough from the hallway.

“What do you want, boar?”

Dimitri’s face still stings to see, and he frustratingly rarely rises to Felix’s bait. Now however he looks concerned and maybe a little less guarded than usual, so Felix doesn’t push it farther. “Felix, I uh… I can hear Sylvain.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’ve told you before, I’m not his father, I can’t stop him from bringing girls home. Sorry you have to hear it. Leave me alone.”

Dimitri shakes his head. He looks tired and his eyes are surprisingly soft. “I… I don’t think there’s anyone else there. Just him. I think he um… I think he needs someone.”

“You’re someone.” The words shoot instinctively from Felix’s mouth at the same time that his heart lurches. Sylvain’s eyes, burning and swimming, looking at Miklan. “Why don’t you go figure it out?”

“I shouldn’t have said _someone_, Felix, I apologize.” Soft but still formal, always the heir to Faerghus, boar or not. “I think he needs you.”

“Why me? Why not get Ingrid?” Pressure is rising in Felix’s chest, half pleasant and half suffocating. He’s never been needed before, definitely not by Sylvain. If anything, it’s always been the other way around, Felix trailing after Sylvain, looking to him for reassurance and companionship and… The pressure is filling his throat, so Felix forces that train of thought back for the moment. “If the noise is bothering you that much I’ll trade rooms with you for the night. Then you can stop putting your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Dimitri doesn’t even dignify him with a response, seeing through him in that way he has, animal cunning. “Just go see him, Felix,” he says, and then he’s gone, shutting his door behind him.

Felix sighs, weighing his options. He could lie back down to a restless night, consoled somewhat by the thought that whatever Sylvain is doing is keeping Dimitri awake as well. But of course he can’t, he still feels the ripple effects of the black hole that opened inside him after Glenn’s death, so he shuts his door behind him and heads down the hallway, past Dimitri’s door to Sylvain’s at the very end.

Before knocking, he pauses, listening. Although he can hear sound through the door he wonders if Dimitri has had a sleepless night as well; Sylvain is nowhere near loud enough to wake someone, least of all someone who snores as loudly as he knows the boar prince still does — that sound is _very_ audible through the stone wall that separates them. Much quieter than he had expected, gut-wrenchingly quiet, he hears the unmistakable sound of crying.

Felix swallows hard. Instead of knocking, he just opens the door. The light from the hallway hits Sylvain’s face, raw and streaked with tears, as he looks up from where it had been clearly buried in his arms, crossed over his knees the way they had been years ago under the dangling felled tree. Felix is almost embarrassed to see him like this, embarrassed at the overwhelming tenderness that floods him immediately, so he steps in and closes the door behind him, not quickly enough to miss the reddened eyes lighting up in a way that brings warm and uncomfortable pressure swarming back. 

The room is much darker now and they can’t see each other as clearly, although the moonlight trickling in through a gap in Sylvain’s curtains makes it easy enough for Felix to shuffle over and climb a little awkwardly onto the foot of his bed. Felix crosses his legs and when his knee brushes against Sylvain’s shin, he lets it rest there. They don’t speak for a few minutes as Sylvain slowly stops crying and instead starts breathing, broken only occasionally by a shuddering gasp. Felix gets the idea that he’s not the only one feeling embarrassed. He wants to tell Sylvain he doesn’t have to be, that he understands, better than anyone maybe, that the pain of losing a brother is only amplified by the complication of the relationship. Maybe he will. Maybe he steels himself, maybe he looks back and finds a time when he felt less alone in the aftermath of Glenn’s death.

“Sylvain,” he says, and with his eyes adjusted to the darkness he can see him raise his head wearily, “can I… can I hold your hand?”

He lets out a terrible sound, half sob and half laugh, and Felix feels the pain of it cut into him more sharply than any sword in battle. “Yeah, Felix. I’d like that.”

“I know it’s not the same as holding hands with a girl.” He doesn’t know why he says this as he stretches out half-blindly, hitting Sylvain’s knee first and using the shape of his leg to guide his hand to Sylvain’s. He almost isn’t sure how to go about it, but leading as always Sylvain laces their fingers together and holds on tight. “Sorry.”

“I don’t want it to be the same,” he says. It’s dark and his skin is feverishly warm against Felix’s, the sick heat of emotional exertion. “It’s different with you. It means something to me.”

His heart thumps. To steady his breathing he rolls his eyes, for no one’s benefit in the dim light. “Because I don’t just want you for your Crest?”

Another half-laugh, less choked this time but it still stings for him to hear it. “What do you want me for, Felix?”

Felix feels himself… blushing. His skin grows almost as hot as Sylvain’s, he instinctively wants to pull his hand back but it is gripped too tightly, like a rope in a drowning man’s fingers. He shifts uncomfortably instead — a mistake that pushes his knee closer against Sylvain’s leg and fills him with more heat. “You know what I meant, you idiot.”

“Sorry, just teasing.” His voice is still a little shaky. The lighter edge from a moment ago is gone already, not that Felix minds. He’s breathing harder than he’d like to be, loudly enough that Sylvain has to hear it but he doesn’t bring it up. “I know you’ll think I’m stupid for feeling this way but… I miss Miklan. And I feel… I feel sick over what I did.”

“That’s only a little stupid.” He can’t completely let his guard down, he’s trying so hard it hurts, but to make up for it he rubs his thumb along Sylvain’s hand. “You know you did the right thing, right?”

Sylvain shrugs. “Was it the right thing, or just something that had to be done?”

“Is there a difference?”

“Maybe not.”

They settle into another long silence. Felix is still absently stroking his thumb up and down, over and over, hypnotizing himself. His body is warm where he’s touching Sylvain, but prickling with gooseflesh where he’s exposed to the cold air in the room. Too late to go back for a sweater, now that he feels like he might rather freeze to death than let go of Sylvain’s hand.

“Felix, why do you hate Miklan so much?” His voice is small in the dark. 

“What kind of question is that?” The words come out much more harshly than he intended but he’s shocked, as if by a blow.

“I know he wasn’t a good person, and I know you don’t, um, suffer fools lightly.” Small, shaky, wounded animal, no knife this time. “But I have to ask. It seems kind of… personal.”

Felix sighs. “You really don’t know?” Sylvain shakes his head and the moonlight glints on his hair. Again, sighs. “Because… because of everything he did to you. Because he hated you for something that you had nothing to do with, something your family forced on you. Because he let that hatred fester inside him and turn him into a monster. Because he hurt you, over and over, at times when I couldn’t be there to protect you. Because even now, from beyond the grave, he’s still hurting you and there’s still nothing I can do about it.” He’s kept his voice down, suddenly very aware of how easily Dimitri had heard noises from Sylvain’s room earlier, but he’s breathing hard again, confused and angry and overwhelmed all at once.

Sylvain is looking right at him, gripping his hand even more tightly, and Felix can see his eyes are wet again by the light reflecting and shimmering in them. Without thinking, he reaches his free hand up to swipe gently at the corners of his eyes, leaves it lingering there on his cheek. For a moment he isn’t sure if he’ll lean in closer and fall forwards into the pit opening up inside his stomach, but he doesn’t and Sylvain doesn’t and they sit there motionless until Felix can’t remember anymore.

When Felix wakes the next morning, almost definitely late for class, he’s stretched horizontally across the foot of Sylvain’s bed, legs hanging over the edge onto the floor. As he tries to sit up, there’s a tug on his shirt — Sylvain, clutching a handful of it, still asleep with his head near Felix’s stomach and his feet akimbo at the head of the bed. Felix gently disentangles his fingers and, without waking him, slips away.

* * *

As soon as they return from the Fraldarius territory, Felix heads to the sauna. Like he is after any encounter with his father, he’s unsettled and angry and he can barely understand why. Hopefully the hot steam can clear his mind, or at least force him to tire enough to unwind his weary brain.

Felix grabs a towel from the closet in the entryway, stripping off everything but his underclothes and stepping into the interior. He tosses his clothes onto the floor, sets his towel on the bench, and stands still for a moment, letting the heat wash over him. His skin starts to feel damp almost immediately. He lowers himself onto the bench, the wood warming his thighs and back, and takes in a deep, hot breath. He sits there a long time, trying not to think of anything, letting the anger swirl in his belly without overwhelming him.

He’s just starting to feel exhaustion hit his bones when the door opens. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes, closed for who knows how long, even as he hears a voice he can’t identify say something indistinguishable and the door shut. There’s a shuffling for a moment, then footsteps against the wooden floor, coming his way. “I told Dimitri you’d be here.”

At this he does raise his lids, letting the shape of Sylvain swim into view to match his voice. He’s standing before Felix in a loose tunic, already starting to cling to him in the hot, wet air, his shoes in one hand and towel and trousers slung over each shoulder. He drops everything casually to the floor and then sits there himself, just to Felix’s left. Felix shuts his eyes again. “Why would the boar care where I am?”

“This may surprise you, Felix, but we all care about you.”

“Idiots,” he mutters. His skin is wet with steam and sweat, one foot resting on the wooden bench so his knee can serve as an armrest, head leaning back against the wall. His hair where it escapes its tie is matted to his neck.

“I guess so.”

Alternating waves of exhaustion and anger keep sweeping over him, almost lulling him with their rhythm. “Just leave me alone.”

“I don’t think you get it,” Sylvain says, and his voice is surprisingly firm, much more so than usual. “We know you, whether you like it or not. Me, Ingrid and Dimitri, we’ve known you a long time. Longer than you’ve had this… this feud with your father.”

“It’s not just a feud. It’s years of being forgotten, hated. Think if I’d died in that battle to rescue the villagers. What would my father have said? ‘He lost his life the way a knight should have.’” Felix is silent for a moment, waves of hot wet air washing over him. Sylvain’s presence at his side feels like a tangible weight. “Glenn’s death was… so pointless. If I’d died today it would have been the same, but finally maybe my father would have given a damn about me.”

Sylvain shakes his head. His neck must have been resting against the bench because his cheek touches and leaves Felix’s knee as he moves. “He loves you, Felix, he just doesn’t understand how to tell you. I know, I’ve seen my own family try to tell me the same thing, but they can’t.”

“How can you make me feel bad for you when I’m the one who had to deal with my father?”

“I’m pathetic? Stupid, an idiot? I don’t know,” Sylvain says. “I really only came here to keep you company though, I don’t mean to take away from anything. You can feel as bad as you want.”

Something about the cloying steam makes Felix too tired to keep his guard up. He sits with his thoughts and with Sylvain for a moment, gathering himself, trying to pretend he’s someone else who has friends they can open up to. Trying to pretend he’s not himself. “I guess I just wish I didn’t have to die for my father to show me he cares about me. Or… or for me to show him the same.”

Sylvain doesn’t say anything. Maybe he doesn’t know what to say — it’s been a long time since Felix has been so vulnerable. He wouldn’t blame him for not having a response. Instead of speaking at all, Sylvain rests his head against Felix’s knee, nestling in close. It’s oppressively hot and sticky where their bare skin touches, but he doesn’t mind. Still unable to open his eyes, Felix stretches out an arm and threads his fingers into Sylvain’s hair, gripping it hard, hopefully not hard enough to hurt but he can’t help it. Just as hard, Sylvain pushes his face into Felix’s leg, nose and lips crushing against him, a dam somewhere finally breaking.

For the first time since Glenn, he feels a tear running down his face, but it evaporates quickly in the hot air, leaving a sticky trail of salt as it swirls into the steam. They sit like that long enough that when Sylvain pulls away, reaching up to disentangle Felix’s fingers first to avoid a scalping, there’s a red mark on his skin from where his face pressed. “Come on, Felix, let’s get you to bed before we both melt in here.”

He’s sluggish, more worn out from the trip and the fight and the lack of sleep and everything than he thought. Sylvain stands and extends a hand, and wearily Felix takes it. He lets Sylvain hoist him up, watching as he picks up their belongings and dumbly following him into the entryway and out of the steam. The air isn’t cold enough yet to shock him, so he stands still, watching him towel off and dress, mechanically taking his own towel when Sylvain hands it to him and drying himself. He feels a little childish but must be too tired to care.

“Here, let me help you,” Sylvain says, and he takes the towel, tossing it with the other used linens. He picks up Felix’s trousers, guiding Felix to lift each of his legs and settling the band around his waist. He grabs his shirt and pulls it over his head, and Felix slides his arms into the sleeves as if he’s a marionette. His skin is hot where Sylvain is touching him, his body in a slow fire. He’s more conscious than ever of how much shorter he is.

Sylvain looks at him for a moment, then slowly he takes Felix’s face in his hands. “You’re glowing from the steam,” he says, an ocean of something unspoken behind his words, and Felix’s heart is pounding in his ears. Sylvain leans in, eyes closing, and kisses him, soft and tender, chaste almost considering that it’s Sylvain. Felix’s eyes close too, everything emptying from his body for a moment to be replaced with a whirlwind, a vortex, of things he doesn’t know how to name. And as soon as it began, it’s over and he’s exhaling and Sylvain is smiling at him. “Sorry if that was too weird, Felix. Let’s go.”

Maybe it is too weird. Maybe the timing is wrong. They walk in silence back to their rooms and they don’t speak of this night for a long time. Felix sleeps, deep and dreamless.

* * *

Felix only goes because Sylvain, Ingrid and Dimitri insist on it, and they could overpower him if they all pounce at once. He’s never been the type for dancing, saving all his grace for his movements on the battlefield, and tonight is no different. But he goes.

Sylvain disappears almost immediately — Felix thinks he had seen Hilda and Dorothea sharing something that looked like a flask, and Sylvain is not one to turn down time with alcohol and girls that even Felix has to admit are pretty. Not his type but he sees what Sylvain might see.

Ingrid and Dimitri know he’s not comfortable and as much as he usually can’t stand the boar prince he’s good to have around at a party. He never gets too into it, never has too much fun. Felix feels a little more at home next to him, for once. Ingrid asks him to dance, and he refuses until Dimitri elbows him in the ribs hard enough to leave a bruise — the unintentional strength of a brute. The boar winces and apologizes but Felix is already walking to the floor with Ingrid. He awkwardly takes her hand in one of his, putting his other one even more awkwardly on her waist, but she only laughs as she settles her free hand where his shoulder meets his neck. He sees Mercedes and Annette whispering to each other on the sidelines, looking at him wide-eyed, and he sneers at them before turning his attention back to Ingrid.

“Do you remember when we took dance lessons at the Gautiers’?” she asks. Her eyes are bright in the multitude of candles. She looks prettier than usual — the other girls in the Blue Lions must have finally gotten her to try wearing makeup. He nods. “I always thought you were the best — don’t tell Sylvain I said that.”

“Don’t butter me up,” he scoffs, but there’s no edge to his voice. Since coming to the Academy together, he and Ingrid have grown a lot closer. He can’t help but remember the brief moments of relative peace her letters brought him while he squired in the west, when he had needed someone to reach out to him. He also sometimes can’t help but feel that they’re equally bonded by looking after Sylvain, cleaning up after him, drawn in over and over again by him, but he would never admit it to her. He can barely admit it to himself.

“I’m serious!” They’re whirling around now and Felix actually almost feels comfortable — almost. He catches Dimitri’s eye as they pass him and he gives Felix a too-earnest thumbs up. _Idiot._ “You learned so quickly, you were so graceful… I felt like a baboon next to you. And now look at you. You hate dancing. It’s a shame.” She shakes her head.

“You all should know by now I’m just not a fun person to be around.”

“Maybe,” she says, smiling, “but it’s worth the effort.”

He’s touched but he tries not to show it, biting down on the hint of a smile that threatens to spread, unbidden, across his face. “So, if you were Sylvain you’d be talking my ear off about all the girls you wanted to dance with. What sort of guy are you hoping will catch your eye?”

“Felix!” She’s surprised. “What a question, coming from you.”

He shrugs, and her hand on his shoulder rises and falls with the movement. “It’s better than just looking at each other in silence until the song is over. And I mean it — Sylvain would _never_ let me have a moment’s peace in a setting like this. Not talking feels strange.”

She nods. “You have a point.” Then, she blushes. The flush looks good on her, warms up her face and makes her look a little less like she’s a moment away from scolding you. “Actually, if you must know, there is one person I’m… interested in.”

“Don’t be coy. You’ll be losing a valuable wingman if you don’t tell me.”

The pink swipe across her face deepens a little. “I’m sure you have lots of practice with that,” she says, looking over Felix’s shoulder to avoid meeting his eyes as she continues. “It’s… well, actually, uh, Ashe and I have been —”

“Ashe?” he repeats, widening his eyes a little comically and doing his best for a volume level that would scare her into thinking other people could hear him but wouldn’t actually be audible under the music. He hits the mark exactly.

“Shh!” She shakes her head. “What has gotten into you? Are you… having fun?”

“Never. So tell me more about Ashe.”

“Is it so unusual that I would be interested in him?”

“Maybe. He just seems a little… well, not your type.”

“Maybe on the surface,” she concedes, and she gives Dimitri a little wave over Felix’s shoulder as they spin past him again on the sidelines, talking with the professor now. “But we both want the same thing — to be a knight, the kind in the stories. I know you hate that kind of thing but that’s my dream, and it’s Ashe’s dream too. We’ve read all the same books and we like doing the same kind of training and… and he’s kind and earnest and thoughtful.” She’s blushing so hard now Felix wonders if all the blood in her body is pooling in her face. “Why am I telling you this?”

He shrugs again. “I must just have the face of someone who wants to listen.”

She laughs this time, as if what he said is ridiculous — and in fairness, it is a little. “At least about boy or girl trouble, right?” He nods. “What about you, any girls you’re interested in? Anyone I can put in a good word with for you?”

“I may not be quite my usual self tonight but you have to know I could never change that much.” He shakes his head. “The only time I’d ever be caught dead with any of the girls at this school is when Sylvain forces me into a double date if he asks someone out who wants to bring a friend.”

Something changes in Ingrid’s eyes — they soften somehow, lose a little light-heartedness, not in a bad way but in a way that puts Felix on his guard instantly. “Well, then, what about a—”

“Hey, Felix, didn’t know you were such a party animal. Mind if I cut in?”

He drops Ingrid’s hand and turns to find Sylvain standing there. The top button on his shirt is undone and his eyes are bright with the kind of fun that could only come from a little drinking, but otherwise he looks in pretty good shape. Felix and Ingrid share a relieved glance over his shoulder, happy to not have to think about carrying him back to his room later after overindulgence. “I don’t care, but I think Ingrid wanted to —”

“Great!” Sylvain says, voice a little louder than usual and clearly in the mood for cutting off people’s sentences, but to Felix’s surprise he reaches out and takes his hand. Not Ingrid’s.

“What are you doing, you idiot?” Felix mutters, resisting a little. Ingrid is watching seriously, though he doesn’t understand why. “You know I… I hate dancing.”

“Oh, come on Felix,” he whines, “you were dancing with Ingrid! Don’t I get a turn?”

People are starting to look over at them. “Fine,” he mutters. “Sorry, Ingrid, guess I can’t help you out after all.”

“I’ll come find you later,” she says, and she fades back into the crowd.

“You two looked like you were having fun.” Sylvain still has Felix’s hand grasped in his own, and he puts his other hand on his waist, pulling him much closer than he had been with Ingrid and settling it comfortably on Felix’s lower back. Feeling stupid and very hot under the collar, Felix puts his hand on Sylvain’s shoulder. He has to reach a little — Sylvain is much taller than he is.

“Not as much as you.” He can’t even smell alcohol on his breath; Sylvain must have underdone it. Since Miklan died it had been much more difficult for him to understand and respect his own limits, on and off the battlefield. This is a nice change.

Sylvain shakes his head, the movement a little exaggerated. A new song begins but he doesn’t seem to notice and Felix is caught in his grip. “Nah, I was just hanging out with Hilda and Dorothea. Those girls do know how to have a good time.”

So he’d been right earlier. “I thought so,” he says. “Which one am I going to have to foist my company on so you can take the other one home with you?”

“I thought you liked being my wingman, Felix. Come on, all those gorgeous girls I set you up with? You don’t even have to do any work!” When he doesn’t reply, Sylvain sighs. “Well, you’re in luck tonight then. Neither of them are… ah… interested in me. If you know what I mean.” And he winks, as if he’s being very coy about something very difficult to guess.

“You’re stupid,” Felix says. He does get a kick out of imagining, for a moment, the scene that must have happened for Sylvain to find that out. Being rejected, separately or maybe together, by both Hilda and Dorothea must have stung.

“Maybe so,” Sylvain agrees cheerfully. He leans down a little closer to Felix, conspiratorially. It makes him nervous. “So, Felix, now that I’ve rescued you from Ingrid, who can I send you off to?”

Felix rolls his eyes. “Ingrid and I already covered this, Sylvain. I don’t really want to be dancing with anybody. I definitely don’t want to have to talk to some girl I’m not interested in.” He frowns. “You’re ready to send me off already?”

“Aww, Felix, you’re usually the type who wants to be sent off. Do you want to know a secret? It’s not really a secret.” Sylvain’s eyes are still shining and he looks like he feels happier right now than Felix ever has in his life. He ducks his head closer to Felix, putting his mouth to his ear, jaw brushing against his cheek as he speaks. Felix feels hot sparks across his face where it touches Sylvain’s and hopes he’s not blushing. “No.” He pulls back to look at Felix, grinning like… like an idiot.

“No what?”

“No, I’m not ready to send you off.” More sparks, rising in the pit of Felix’s stomach this time. “Remember how we used to take dance lessons with Ingrid at my family’s estate?”

“Were you listening to the conversation Ingrid and I had earlier?” Felix cuts him off. “You’ve so far only brought up topics we’ve already talked about.”

Sylvain doesn’t reply to this, instead continuing his earlier thought. “Don’t tell Ingrid I said this, but you were always the best. What a waste.”

“I’m dancing now, aren’t I? How is that a waste?”

“You know what? You’re right.” Sylvain is in an agreeable mood, evidently. Any other thoughts wash out of his face and he’s smiling again. Felix is on edge and uncomfortable, not least of all because of how closely Sylvain still has him held around the waist. It’s… intimate.

“So,” Felix says, dreading any long and silent stretches looking into Sylvain’s warm brown eyes, “I should have reciprocated your question earlier. Who are you after at the end of this song? If Hilda and Dorothea are out of the question.”

“What could be better than this? Right here, close to you, everyone around us staring in shock at Felix Fraldarius actually enjoying himself for once.” Sylvain winks. “Maybe we should go back to my room together — that will really start them talking.”

“Enough, Sylvain.” The light-hearted tone Sylvain is using hurts Felix for some reason, insults him. “We’ll finish this ridiculous dance and you’ll inevitably get me involved in whatever hare-brained flirtation you have planned.”

“Really, though, I don’t have anything planned,” Sylvain says. “For now at least I’m enjoying this dance with my friend. After that maybe we can go torment Dimitri a little more.” HIs hand around Felix’s is warm as ever and he’s sure he’s blushing now, like it or not. Sylvain is always like this when he drinks, too flirty and open. It always cuts at Felix a little, envious of his ability to be happy and alive after everything that’s happened, to be the kind of person that other people like instead of an unapproachable scorpion. Able to step back from the cliff’s edge afterward. “Are you having fun at all, Felix? Are you okay spending a little more time with stupid idiot Sylvain?”

He grimaces. “You are stupid, and an idiot, but… I am having fun. A _little_. I… I always…” He can’t finish, the walls can’t come down, but Sylvain grins like a torch in a cavern and they understand each other. When the song is over, Sylvain gives his hand a somewhat tender squeeze before he drops it and bows to him, comic and exaggerated, and they bother Ingrid for a while when they can’t find Dimitri. 

Sometimes Felix wonders what path they would have continued down from this night if Edelgard hadn’t suddenly dropped the entire nation into all-out war.


	2. War

For five years it’s like it was when Felix was squiring, hardly seeing anyone on friendly terms, skirmishes and rebellions every other month, tirelessly fighting and watching his father descend further and further into political gambiting. Felix’s father recalls him to Fraldarius territory almost immediately, turning him into an errand boy of violence, quelling rebellions and routing bandits. The Fraldarius house, with a few others in the Kingdom, sides against the Empire, so the other tasks that fall to Felix include eliminating soldiers he knows would otherwise be reporting back to Edelgard. It gets a little harder each time to forget her face, waiting for them somewhere in Enbarr.

Five years of nothing but killing. At the end of another bleak day, Felix receives a letter, the first one in a long time — he hasn’t had the ability to respond to Ingrid, nothing to talk about except war and death, but she’s reached out again with a few short words.

_Are you going back to the monastery?_

The promise. He’s almost forgotten it in the fog of battle and strategy and countless wounds mended by healers and re-opened over and over. The rumors of Dimitri’s execution. He sighs, listening to his father in the next room talking to one of his generals. _Do you want to go somewhere? Not home._

The Fraldarius estate hasn’t been his home for a long time. He waits, surprisingly calm, for the general to take his leave. When he enters the room his father is sitting behind his desk, looking older than Felix has ever seen him, worn down. His heart is a weight. “Father,” he says, clearing his throat first to get his attention, but he doesn’t look up. “Father.” Louder. “I’m leaving in the morning.”

“Is there a group of bandits I haven’t heard of yet?” his father asks, still attentive to his papers. “Well, I expect you’ll make short work of them.”

“I’m leaving for good.” At this he stops what he’s doing, glancing at Felix incredulously. “I’m going to the Galatea estate, and then I’m going to Garreg Mach.”

“Your school?” His voice is almost insulting in its surprise, but Felix can’t really blame him. The thought sounds ridiculous even to him. “But there’s nothing left there.”

“It’s in a strong position. There’s a chance I could reconnect with some powerful allies, do something that matters. Regardless, I’m going. You’ll need to find someone else to kill thieves for you from now on.”

He looks at him for a long moment. He still has a paper clutched in his hand, maybe a diagram for a potential upcoming assault, or a bill for the most recent shipment of rations, or an old letter from Felix’s mother, gone so long now he could barely remember her. “Will your old professor be there, by any chance?”

Felix knits his brows. “I doubt it. They’re probably dead.”

“That’s a shame. I felt that person understood you.” A heartbeat of silence, something stirring inside him, wanting to respond. Then he’s looking back down at the messy surface of his desk, diaphanous moment erased. “Good luck, Felix.” And with that, he’s dismissed.

He packs that night and leaves the next morning for the Galatea territory, a day of lonely and tedious riding, but he makes it. Ingrid is waiting for him, like she knew he would be coming, and he shakes her hand with fondness that surprises him. She’s older, her face a little thinner, hair much shorter than he remembers. Count Galatea greets him warmly too, another firm handshake, and they’ll rest there for the night before starting the journey to Garreg Mach.

“So…” Felix says, situated across from Ingrid in two chairs in front of a fire that does a lot to heat the ache out of his bones. He hates riding. “How the hell are we going to catch up on five whole years?”

“Slowly, not all at once,” she replies, smiling a little sadly. “I’ve mainly been working on the political side of things, not enough fighting or time on the front lines. Luckily none of my father’s marriage plans have worked out yet.”

“Some good news at last.” His voice is dry and she laughs. “Heard from anyone else? I know I… haven’t been the best correspondent. Sorry.”

Ingrid nods. “A little, Mercedes and Annette sometimes. They’re coming to the monastery too. I’ve heard the same rumors about Dimitri as everyone else, and I have to imagine Dedue is with him… wherever he is.” They’re silent for a moment. “The last I heard of Ashe he was serving House Rowe. They’re loyal to the Empire. I don’t know if he’s even still alive.” She’s a little choked. 

“I’m sorry, Ingrid. I’m sure he is — he was a brave kid.”

She grins, weakly. “Oh, and Sylvain of course, but you know.”

“Know what?”

Now she’s frowning. “Know about what’s going on with him.”

He shakes his head. He’s tried very hard not to think about Sylvain in the intervening five years, not letting thoughts of his warm eyes and warm hands enter his mind when he needs to focus, which seem to be the times he lingers most persistently. Something had taken root in Felix, bloomed maybe, tried to wake him up but he hadn’t been ready to face it. “I haven’t seen him since the monastery.”

“Felix!” She seems shocked and almost angry. Maybe disappointed. “You can’t be serious.” When he doesn’t offer a counter, she sighs. “Well, this is going to be uncomfortable.”

“What?”

“This journey.” She looks down at him where he’s slouched in his chair. “Sylvain is meeting us here tonight. I reached out to him the same day I wrote to you.”

Hot blood and ice water fill Felix’s veins at the same time, shocking him, sitting him straight up. “What?” Louder this time.

“Did you think I’d only ask you?” Surprised, defensive. “There’s no point in one without the other. We all have to be there, we promised. Everyone, Ashe, Dimitri, Dedue… We all have to be there.”

He slumps back, head spinning.

Sylvain arrives while Felix is sleeping, a fact he discovers when he wakes to someone whispering his name, very close to him.

He rolls over on the couch he’s sleeping on since the Galateas don’t have a spare bedroom as allied troops pour in and out, bleary and hot under the fur Ingrid gave him. He sits up, rubbing his eyes to clear sleep quickly, torso exposed as the blanket falls away. “Sylvain?”

With his eyes at least relatively open, he sees that it is. He’s crouched or kneeling in front of the couch, still somehow perceptibly taller than he’d been in school. His face is older, harder, planes of his skin catching the glint of the firelight without softening. His hair is darker. He grins though and the years fall away, same Sylvain. Damn it. “Wow, Felix, looking good. I should have known you wouldn’t slow down on the training even after school.” Felix blushes, hoping the dark hides it, rubbing the back of his neck. “Come here, you dummy.” He stands, reaching down to drag a mute Felix to his feet — fur fallen to the floor, forgotten — and wraps him in his arms.

Sylvain is warm and thoroughly present, hands pressing hot into Felix’s back and neck, fingers gripping where they land, latching on. Overwhelmed, _happy_, Felix locks his arms around Sylvain’s waist, clutching two embarrassingly earnest fistfuls of Sylvain’s shirt in his hands, burying his face in his shoulder. Sylvain chuckles a little. “Wow, how many times have you been hit on the head since I saw you last?”

“Shut up.” Muffled. He turns his head sideways, resting where it lies, hot breath hitting Sylvain’s neck. “Am I not allowed to be… can’t I just… after all this time, isn’t it…” He can barely even speak, his heart is a lump in his throat and he’s exhausted and he’s never been one to seek his own happiness. 

Sylvain holds him a long time after that, resting his head on top of Felix’s, tall enough to do it comfortably. “I’m sorry for waking you.” His voice rumbles through his chest and into Felix’s. It’s a good feeling, too good, and he drops his arms, stepping back. Sylvain clings to him just a moment, not letting go or not wanting to, but he relents, looking at him again in the firelight. “I wanted to see you right away, I couldn’t wait until morning. It’s been so long.” He pauses, now looking at Felix all over. He’s blushing again, looking away. “You look… different.”

The scars — he hadn’t thought about having to cover them up. He must look terrifying, monstrous. “I feel different.”

Sylvain reaches out to run his fingers over an especially long mark on his upper left arm, a reminder of a wound that he was sure would have ended his days as a swordfighter if he had been left-handed. Even now, with the healer’s capable attention, he still sometimes had numbness in his hand and forearm. The scar tissue feels molten under Sylvain’s hand, and it lingers on his skin for a moment before he drops it. “That must have hurt.” His voice is soft, his fingers had been soft.

Felix shrugs. “That was just from a blade. I should show you the one I have from Thoron. Somehow in the heat of battle I often forget I’m not especially strong against magic.”

Sylvain nods. “Show me.”

Might as well. Felix sits back on the couch, Sylvain next to him, and pushes up the cuff of the pants he’d fallen asleep in, slowly exposing the tangled mess of branching, faded pink lines. His skin looks as though it has been knit together, no matter how many Heals had been cast, no matter how many salves he rubs into it. Sylvain stares at it, hard, looking so serious that Felix is embarrassed. “Is this all you’ve been doing for five years? Getting hurt?”

Felix flicks his cuff back down in one motion. “I’ve been doing my share of hurting, too.”

“Is there a difference in the long run?”

Another shrug. “Maybe not.” The silence feels charged as soon as it descends, so he breaks it quickly. “And what has Margrave Gautier been doing?”

Sylvain chuckles a little. “I’m not the Margrave until my dad kicks it.”

“Who said I was asking about you?” Dry, but Sylvain still grins.

“All right, go back to the Felix that wanted to hug me,” he says. Then he shakes his head. “Honestly, I’ve been kind of at sea. Some fighting, some politics, some proposed marriage alliances that never panned out. Gautier territory has been pretty overrun with invaders from Sreng with the unrest in the kingdom. We’ve been busy bargaining and suppressing, whichever makes sense at the time.”

“Any scars for you?” Gooseflesh rises on his skin at the thought of Sylvain exposed the way he had been, showing him his marks, Felix trailing his own fingers over his skin.

Humiliatingly, Sylvain seems to notice because he picks up the fur off the floor and tosses it over to Felix. “Stay warm, you definitely don’t need to catch a cold before three long days of your favorite things: riding and spending time with Ingrid and I.” Felix rolls his eyes, pulling the pelt over his lap and crossing his legs under it. “And I might have a scar or two, but none I’ll show you when Count Galatea could walk in at any moment.” He winks.

“Fine, keep your secrets.”

“Not forever, just for now.” There’s another pause. The fire crackles, burning low now. It’s harder to see Sylvain. “I’m happy you’re here, Felix. I’m glad you decided to come — when Ingrid wrote to me, I thought for sure it would just be her and I who remembered our promise.”

“A promise to a dead man,” Felix says, voice hard. “One that I was stupid enough to keep.”

“You must have known there was something better waiting for you than what you had,” Sylvain replies, thoughtfully. “Fighting and killing all on your own is a hard life.”

“What could be better than going to a fortress full of ghosts, looking for people who may not even still be alive, all in service to a boar prince who had his head cut off in Fhirdiad years ago?”

“Hey, at least you still have Ingrid. And me. Whatever that’s worth. You know we’re alive.”

Felix snorts. They stay up later, irresponsibly late before a long day of traveling, catching up and telling stories until suddenly Felix starts awake, cheek pressing uncomfortably against something. The fire is embers, the sky is just beginning to grey through the windows, and Sylvain is next to him, snoring softly. They’re both under the fur Ingrid had given Felix, pressed together by Sylvain’s arm thrown and curled around his shoulders, the side of his face crushed against the crumpling fabric of Sylvain’s shirt. Felix’s legs are crossed, still, uncomfortably, and Sylvain has one of his own thrown over his lap.

Felix’s whole body flushes, filling with embarrassment and a kind of softness he’s just starting to understand. He doesn’t try to move, the way he would have in school, instead just looking at Sylvain where his head is tipped back onto the sofa. He looks younger in his sleep, less complicated. His chest rises and falls calmly, lifting and lowering Felix along with it where they’re held together. His throat is extended. Felix swallows hard. They’re so close, he could reach out with the hand that isn’t clamped somewhere between their bodies and touch that throat, seize it, grip it. He lets the thought pass, instead greedily getting his fill of looking at Sylvain the way he’s never able to otherwise. He’s still staring at him when he drops back into sleep.

The road to Garreg Mach is predictably miserable, both because of the seemingly endless riding that leaves Felix sore and irascible and because of the incessant talking Sylvain and Ingrid insist on. Three days of sleeping on the cold ground, bouncing in the saddle, having to listen to teasing from the other two as if no time has passed at all.

They ride close to each other the whole way, separating only to send someone to catch a rabbit for dinner, afraid to lose sight of the others as if they could slip away and let five more years pass if they were apart again. Maybe it makes the trip slower but Felix doesn’t mind much.

When they make it to the monastery, just like old times, they immediately join the professor in a battle. Ashe is there, leaving Ingrid beaming, Mercedes and Annette just like they promised, and to everyone’s shock, Dimitri is there. For weeks on end, dealing with that revelation, the loss of Dedue and the fallout of the past five years takes all of Felix’s time and he forgets to ask Sylvain again about his scars.

* * *

Felix sits to the side of the courtyard, sharpening his sword under the stone roof out of the drizzle, hidden mostly behind the shrubs. Dimitri had been at the training grounds when he had dropped by earlier, and the less time spent with the boar prince these days the better. At least if he had to be out in the world he would pick an isolated spot.

He slides the whetstone along the blade, listening to the soft swish of metal on grit and the light patter of rain just a meter or so away. As he listens, he starts to hear something else. Voices.

“…the vicious cycle continues. Do you get it now? To all these commoner girls, I’m just a trophy. Or rather, a studhorse.”

Sylvain’s voice. He pauses mid-swipe across the edge of his sword, curious to hear more.

“That’s cynical.” The professor. Even after five years and the unbelievable changes they’ve undergone Felix would know their voice anywhere.

“Perhaps, but that doesn’t change the fact that these girls don’t love me. They only love the potential rewards of loving me.”

Felix sheaths his sword slowly, trying to stay silent as he rises and creeps along the bushes, listening to figure out where the conversation is coming from. He loses a couple of lines in the rain but eventually, almost at the end of the line of cover, he catches sight of Sylvain’s red hair through a gap. The professor is looking up at him, strange expression in their eyes. “…brat who should pay for that Crest. Maybe I’ll collect the debt. Ha! Gotcha! Wow, you shoulda seen the look on your face just then. Don’t mind me, Professor. After all, ladies love a dark and brooding noble.”

They stand there, same unreadable emotion on their face, and then they turn and walk off. Felix is strangely shaken, watching Sylvain stand there breathing so hard that Felix can see his shoulders rising and falling. He steels himself, knowing he should say something but almost… afraid to.

“Is that what passes for a joke these days?” He steps out through the bushes, foolishly drenching himself as he brushes the wet branches. Sylvain turns to face him, too slowly, as if he had already known someone was there. “Dimitri’s shadow looms longer even than I thought if that’s the case.”

Sylvain’s face is clouded, intense, angry. Felix has rarely seen him this way, famously even-keeled and light-hearted Sylvain, more likely to cry than to yell and not likely at all to do either. He’s off-centered, put on edge. “Never would have expected you to be eavesdropping. Don’t you usually avoid people?”

“You were being loud enough I couldn’t help but overhear.” The rain is coming down steadily but neither moves to cover. “So it’s not just your friends that you force to hear all about your miserable life with a Crest? You actually force our professor to listen to your whining too?”

“You could never understand how it is with me, Felix, so don’t try to lecture me for something you know nothing about.”

“Oh, please.” He knows he’s pushing too hard, being cruel and putting his fingers in a wound that runs deep, but without the grounding of Sylvain’s usual openness he doesn’t know any other way to act. “I’m sorry I can’t comprehend your privileged life as a noble with a Crest that women fall all over themselves for the chance to be with. Sorry I just could never relate to a family that loves you and wants you around and in their lives. Sorry to be so insensitive to your plight as a brat so spoiled by life that he can’t imagine any other way to —”

“Enough, Felix!” Sylvain’s voice is loud; with the weather no one else is outside but the volume is such that someone indoors might actually hear it. No one comes running as they glare at each other, Felix defiant and breathing hard, Sylvain now looking furious. They’ve fought together countless times before but this is the first time Felix understands that his friend could be a frightening opponent. “I’ve spent my entire life knowing that it was my Crest, some fucking thing that I was _born_ with, that tore my entire family apart. My brother beat me, hurt me, tried to kill me, all because of something I had no control over. And you know what?” He’s upset now, his voice cracking a little as if he’s about to cry, but his eyes are still dark with anger. “He was right. You remember at Ingrid’s where you asked if I have any scars? I’ll show you one right now.” He grabs the neck of his shirt, yanking it down to reveal a twisted line just below his collarbone. The air is pushed out of Felix’s lungs, as if by a physical blow, picturing how close this call must have been. Reflexively he reaches up to touch the mark but jerks his hand back. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Sylvain, what an idiot, only someone as stupid as you could get hit by a blow as obvious as that.’” He laughs but it’s empty, and although he lets go of his shirt it hangs wetly where he tugged it, leaving the scar on display. “And you’re right. I remember it, the ambush by the bandits in the middle of the night, taking one life after another with the lance that turned my brother into a monster. And I just thought… who cares? The life I have, the person I am, isn’t worth Miklan’s anger and death, my family’s shattering and the ice the Gautiers have been frozen in.” Felix is shaking, soaked but more so afraid of what he’s hearing. “So when the last one left came at me with a knife I didn’t stop him, didn’t try to dodge. I’m lucky — blessed you could say.” Another sick cicada buzz of a laugh. “And I had to kill him anyway. I know you think you’re above it all, that you’ve seen it all, and I know you have your own pain you refuse to deal with. But you don’t know everything.”

He’s stunned completely into silence for a moment. He expects Sylvain to walk away, like the professor had done only a moment that feels like a lifetime ago. He expects himself to walk away, too afraid and overcome to say anything, but he doesn’t. They stare at each other as if a veil has been lifted between them for the first time. At some point the drizzle had turned to rain, hammering down on them, muffling any other noise from the grounds. Maybe there’s nothing to say…

But of course there is. Sylvain knows, as always. Before he speaks, he reaches out to take the hand Felix had started to extend toward him, still raised at his waist, palm out, defensive. His movements are slow, as if Felix is an animal that might bolt if frightened, and maybe that’s true. Felix doesn’t want to find out. Sylvain raises his hand to his collarbone, placing it flat over the scar, and holds it there. His skin is cool and clammy from the rain but Felix feels the tips of his fingers heat up as if there’s energy lurking beneath the skin, bestowed by the knife of that bandit. Felix drops his eyes from Sylvain’s to look at their hands. “I’m sorry, Felix. I… you really know how to push my buttons sometimes.”

He shakes his head. “I deserved every second of that, worse even. I can’t believe I said all those terrible things… I just…” Sylvain seems willing to let him dangle on the hook more than usual, although he doesn’t look as angry anymore. Felix struggles with his own thoughts for a moment.

“Take your time,” Sylvain says, not condescending. He seems like he’s somehow a few steps ahead on a path that Felix can’t see but they’re both heading down together, like he’s seeing him through mist. “I want the truth. We can’t keep pushing each other away.”

This is generous and Felix knows it, Sylvain isn’t one to keep him at arms’ length. He does take his time, mostly trying to form the words before he says them so he can’t back away from them, partly savoring the feeling of Sylvain’s skin against his where he’s still pressing his palm to his scar. Through mist. He hadn’t asked to take his hand this time. “I… I hate hearing you talk about your Crest.”

“Why?”

“Because it makes you unhappy. And I don’t like seeing you that way.”

“Why?” Sylvain is gentle, insistent, persuasive. 

He’s seen him this way with girls countless times, maybe a little less sincere, maybe more basely motivated. He doesn’t like it turned on him, it makes him feel pinned like a dead butterfly, vulnerable and inflamed like an open wound. He looks up at Sylvain, anger still cooling mixed with desperation. “You know why,” he says, words forced from him like water from a shattering pipe, pleading. “You always know, I’m always trailing behind you. Can’t you say it?”

He sighs, squeezing his hand around Felix’s before dropping it. Sylvain takes a step forward, very close now, and grips his chin between his thumb and forefinger. Felix’s mouth drops open slightly, shocked and strangely subdued. “I need you to follow a little more closely, Felix. I can’t wait forever.” And then he’s gone and Felix is soaked to the bone.

* * *

Like a broken clock, Felix is still where he should be twice a day. Morning and night he paces to the training grounds, almost always empty now that the sun is out more often and sparring can take place outside. Everyone else is so thrilled to have the old Dimitri back, still riding the incredible reality of Dedue’s return that it almost feels like the monastery isn’t in the middle of a war at all.

Almost. 

Felix slams the door behind him to shut out the stars, stripping off everything but the light shoes and loose trousers he had mustered up the energy to pick out. His other clothes have to last him until the fog in his brain settles down enough to let him think about things like laundry again, not things like how similar his father looked to Glenn as he was dying.

He sighs and grips the training sword hard, blood already pounding through his flexed muscles as he moves to strike the dummy. Usually training shuts off his thoughts, lulling him to mindlessness, but tonight the loud interactions of wood on wood are instead hypnotizing him into unpleasant hyper focus.

_Crack_. His father giving up his life for Dimitri, the second son he always wanted.

_Crack_. Dimitri’s return to reality, as if an apology and a handshake with the professor is enough to starve out the animal within for good.

_Crack_. Dying in Dimitri’s arms. Felix watching from a distance, held back by the overwhelming certainty that he wasn’t wanted.

_Crack._ Glenn. _Crack_. His father. _Crack_. His family giving up their lives for the boar prince. _Crack_. Dimitri’s burning eye looking at him with pity on Gronder Field.

Over and over again, smashing into the dummy, splinters burrowing and blisters bubbling where the wood is harsh and tight against his skin. Time flows like water around him and he’s not aware of anything but the dummy and the sword and the faces of the dead and, worse, the living. Over and over, over and over, over and over until he realizes the new sound in the room is his own throat tearing in a wordless howl.

“Felix!”

A hand tugs on his sweat-slick shoulder and before he’s fully snapped out of it, he’s whirling around and striking, just in time to see red hair and widening brown eyes. The training sword connects with Sylvain’s neck where it meets his skull, only mitigated a little by Felix’s exhaustion and the recognition that floods his unconsciousness before his mind catches up and tries to hold him back. Time slows as he realizes what he’s done. Energy drains from Felix’s body, washing him in ice water as Sylvain stumbles back, falling to the floor in a precarious sitting position, eyes unfocused, and the sword drops and he drops, propelling himself forward on hands and knees to meet Sylvain where he is still halfway to supine.

“Sylvain, you idiot,” he says, and he settles anxiously back on his heels behind Sylvain’s head, hands seeking out the already reddening line where he’d cracked him, to inspect for damage and maybe to feel for himself the living blood beneath his skin. “How could you be so thoughtless? You could have been killed, I don’t always train with a practice sword.” He finds as the weight of Sylvain’s head settles in his hands that he is weak throughout, trembling even, not least of all at the realization like a lightning bolt that this could have been fatal. Felix lets his head rest in his lap to hide the quivering of his arms and focuses on pushing aside the hair at the nape of his neck and over his ear to examine the injury.

Sylvain’s eyes are going in and out of focus — concussed or maybe just woozy. “Felix,” he says, thickly, then swallows and tries again. “Felix… I stopped by your room but you weren’t there. Hours ago.” He goes silent, trying to focus his eyes. Felix is barely paying attention to the words, instead unable to look away from or take his hands off of the almost observably developing bruise across Sylvain’s neck. How could he have been so careless. How could they both have been. 

“Lie still,” Felix says, to have something to say. Sylvain’s neck doesn’t seem broken or terribly damaged but it can’t hurt to let his head swim peacefully for a moment with the hope of landing on shore. “I’ll take you to Mercedes in a few minutes.”

“Hours,” repeats Sylvain, as if to remind himself of what his point had been. “You were gone for so long. I went to look for you again and… you were screaming. I could hear you from the dormitory.”

Felix grits his teeth. His father. His brother. Dimitri. Sylvain’s eyes looking at him now with soft concern beneath the layer of confusion. He’s overwhelmed and he’s exhausted and he’s hot under the evaporating layer of sweat on his skin. Sylvain looks so tender and vulnerable in his lap, stretching out on the floor of the training grounds with dust still floating in the air from his impact. He looks like he should never be hurt. Damn it. “I was… I was just training. No one was around.”

“Felix.” It’s a complete sentence and Felix has to look away, busying himself examining the skin around Sylvain’s bruise, fingers hot against his skin. “Felix you… you hit me with a sword.”

Grits harder, widening brown eyes and disgusting slap of wood on flesh. “It was your fault. You shouldn’t have come so close. You’re an idiot.”

Sylvain nods, seemingly happy to agree, then winces and closes his eyes. “Sorry,” he murmurs. Felix’s heart is thumping and as his adrenaline fades he’s drooping closer and closer to Sylvain. “You’re right, I’m reckless.” He lets him lie there, seemingly willing to be still for a few minutes. His head is warm and heavy against his thighs. Felix’s hands rest for the first time in hours, one on Sylvain’s neck just below the bruise, the other on his forehead, lightly but ready to hold him still if he decides to move again. After a while, still not stirring, he opens his eyes again. They look much clearer. Felix’s head is hanging very close to him. Their faces are inches away from each other.

“Are you ready to sit up?” Felix asks, and Sylvain nods. He puts one hand behind his head, tenderly, like supporting a baby’s neck, and one under his shoulder and together they lift him up. He rubs his head, catching and releasing Felix’s fingers when he bumps into his hand there, then turns around to face him.

“How do I look? Think we can save a trip to Mercedes?” He moves closer, offering Felix his neck.

Felix is farther down the path than he’s ever been before. He’s looking at the bruise, looking at Sylvain’s neck, extended and exposed and the room is hot and spinning and his body is exhausted and on fire, and he leans forward. He has to tilt his head up because even sitting down Sylvain is still taller than he is, but he does and he presses his lips to Sylvain’s neck. He gasps. Hot blood floods Felix at the sound and he reaches a hand up to cup the other side of his throat, seizing it like he’d thought about at the Galatea house the night before they left for the monastery. He kisses him again, hard, as if he could somehow draw the bruise out from his skin, and Sylvain inhales again. He’s holding very still, trying not to frighten a wild animal that’s approached him, but his pulse is pounding against Felix’s mouth.

“Say something.” He holds himself where he is, lips moving against Sylvain’s skin, and at that time finally starts to flow again. Sylvain, well-practiced, moves his body closer, extending so Felix falls back a little but Sylvain has him, one arm tight around his waist, hot to the touch where it meets his bare skin, one hand knotting itself in his hair as he kisses his lips, hard, earnest, five years and more of dancing around it finally falling away. Felix’s head is spinning, gripping handfuls of Sylvain’s shirt, opening his mouth against his, adrenaline and blood pounding in his ears. They lean further back until Felix finds himself against the ground, Sylvain pressed against every inch of him, lips finding his face and neck over and over again.

Dust motes float in the air and both of them know by now not to push their luck, not to upset the balance, so with some difficulty Felix eventually pulls back, moving his body out from under Sylvain. He scrambles to a sitting position, panting, covered in the sandy dirt of the training grounds where it sticks to his sweaty skin. Sylvain sits too, breathing heavily, disheveled to a lesser extent.

“That wasn’t exactly what I came here for,” he says finally. It’s an attempt at a joke. Felix doesn’t laugh. “If only you knew… how long I’ve wanted that. You.”

Felix’s heart thumps in his chest. “I can imagine, maybe.” Sylvain flushes a little.

“So… now what?”

_Anything_. Felix shakes his head. “Now… there’s a war going on out there. Notwithstanding the injuries we give ourselves in here,” he says, corner of his mouth tilting up, reaching out to graze Sylvain’s neck where it’s blooming purple. “I don’t know what comes next.”

“I guess it doesn’t really matter,” Sylvain says, and for a moment Felix feels like he’s been stabbed, but then he continues, “We can figure this out on our own time. I’ll just have to be a little less careless.” He grins. “And Felix, I’m serious about what I’ve said before — I can’t wait forever.”

“I can’t either,” Felix murmurs, flushing more, looking down at the ground where his fingers trace anxious patterns in the sand. “I don’t want to but...”

“I know. There’s... a lot going on.”

He nods. They sit in silence for a moment before Felix hears Dimitri’s voice float in from somewhere outside the training grounds. He’s not even close to being ready to face him yet, and as he looks back to Sylvain his eyes must tell the story. 

“I’ll get him away from here, don’t worry about it.” Felix stands, stretching his hand to Sylvain and hoisting him up, wincing a little at the pull on the places where his blisters burst. Sylvain frowns and looks at his hands, turning them over gently. “Go see Mercedes. Now who’s being reckless?” Felix scowls, but Sylvain just laughs and leans in to kiss him again — no pressure, no implication, trying out a new normal. His heart is still pounding, it’s hard to let go. “Stop by later if you want to, okay?”

_Okay_. He does want to later, more than anything, hot in his bed with the memory of Sylvain’s body on top of his, but it’s not the right time. And the thought of Dimitri in the room between them muddles the heat in his stomach with sickness. 

* * *

Felix jumps on a horse as soon as he finds one, following the road back to Garreg Mach, two steps behind as always. The Kingdom soldiers had routed Edelgard’s army, Dimitri had destroyed her monstrous form, the professor had taken her life after she had thrown the dagger one last time at Dimitri, the one Sylvain always used to tease him about. 

_Sylvain_. 

His heart pounds as he dismounts at the door of the stable, leaving a confused hand behind him as he sprints for the infirmary. He’s trying to keep breathing but it’s a long run to the second floor. When he bursts through the door Manuela and Mercedes both jump. 

“Where is he?” He doesn’t mean to sound accusatory but there’s a lump in his throat and a stone in the pit of his stomach and he is scared, scared for maybe the first time since Glenn died. 

Mercedes shakes her head and for a moment his blood turns to ice. “He’s not here,” she says, and her voice is cheerful enough that the blackness at the edges of his vision fades. “You know how he is, he didn’t want to be here a moment longer than he had to. I healed him up and sent him to his room — he’s resting there, unless he ran into some unfortunate woman he’s bothering instead.”

His lungs are heaving, expelling a huge sigh of relief between still trying to catch his breath. He’s not sure if he manages to stammer out his thanks before he’s running again, sprinting for the door at the end of the hallway he’s knocked on so many times, but now he doesn’t wait before throwing it open. Like Mercedes said, he’s there, looking worn down but otherwise okay. Felix feels like he could cry. Instead...

“You irresponsible fool! Protecting me like that. You're so weak, and yet you always...always...”

“What can I say, Felix?” He grins, only a little less energetically than usual. “There’s something about you that makes me want to take this seriously. I’m surprised you’re so worried about me, you looked like a tornado coming through that door.”

Reminded of it, he shuts that door behind him. “You just looked so... in Enbarr it didn’t look good. I thought you might be dead until Ashe rode off with you. You’re so reckless, you could have died, I could have handled them myself.”

“Hey, you should be thanking me, huh?” 

“Yeah, I should be.” He doesn’t but they understand each other. “How does it feel?”

Sylvain shrugs. He lifts the bedsheet from his torso and pulls his shirt up, showing a square of bandages that thankfully doesn’t look too big. The skin around the cloth looks irritated. “It hurts a little.” He drops the hem back down.

“What was it?”

“Thoron, I think.” He grins. “We’re really bonded now.”

“I’m sorry. So far for me that’s been a lifelong annoyance. The scarring has never changed, and the muscle still stings sometimes.”

“It’s worth it.”

Felix shakes his head. “I don’t understand it. Why did you step in? I had those mages handled, or I would have if you hadn’t gotten in the way.”

“I don’t think you did,” Sylvain says. His voice is more serious than speculative. “I don’t know why but... I felt like I had to protect you. Like otherwise it was going to... go badly for you. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you that I could have stopped.”

“And... we both would have had to die then.” He’s sincere, vulnerable. 

“I thought that was just a goofy promise we made when we were kids.” Sylvain winks but his voice is still surprisingly serious.

Felix shakes his head. “I think it’s fate.”

Sylvain taps the bed next to him with the knuckle of his index finger. “Sit here for a minute, if you have the time.” He does, perching, afraid to lean on a spot that might be sore or interfere otherwise with whatever magic Mercedes has worked on him. “Don’t be scared of me, Felix, I’m fine really. Just need some rest and then I’ll be good as new.”

“Good. If you’ll take fighting and preserving your life more seriously then I wish you a speedy recovery.”

Sylvain rolls his eyes. “More rudeness. I guess when the life you save is Felix Fraldarius’ you can’t expect much else.”

“Shut up, biggest fool in Fodlan.” Only one way to make sure that happens. He takes Sylvain’s face between his hands, seizing it as if it was an item he’d thought he lost forever, and presses his lips to his. With the chaos of war swirling around them, they hadn’t done this often enough to lose the electricity crackling down to his toes each time they kiss. Sylvain, as always, reciprocates, still better at this than Felix, more romantic, sliding his fingers against Felix’s scalp to grip his hair by the root. Felix’s mouth is dry from the ride and the run but he always comes alive under Sylvain’s hands in a way he never did before. _Stick together until we die_. 

They break apart, not far, and as Sylvain breathes harder Felix sees him wince. “All right, Mercedes says you should be resting. Keep that heart rate down.”

“Wow, abandoning me in my time of need, hmm?” Sylvain raises one eyebrow, throwing his hands behind his head and, again, wincing as his rib cage stretches. Felix reaches up and grabs hold of his wrists, tugging his arms gently back down to his sides. He doesn’t let go right away, looking at how small his hands are in comparison, barely reaching around the bones of his arms.

“I don’t have to go,” Felix says, “but I figured since you should be resting I’d get out of your hair.” The part of this that he hasn’t really wanted to think about swirls to the surface suddenly. “Since there’s nothing for us to really... do.”

Sylvain’s brow furrows. He doesn’t say anything, waiting for Felix to explain in that way he has that makes him want to spill his guts. But this time he’s not ready, or he’s afraid, maybe some other time. So instead Sylvain finally speaks. “Well, I am starving from all this healing I’ve been doing, but someone said I shouldn’t leave my bed for a while until I’m feeling 100% again. So I need someone to bring me dinner, and if that someone wanted to bring dinner for themselves and eat in here with me... that wouldn’t be as bad as waiting for Mercedes or Manuela to take pity on me. Knowing them they may never.”

He chuckles, can’t help it, his heart is light with relief. “You’re lucky I... I owe you one.”

Something passes between them and then he’s off, grabbing whatever he finds first that Sylvain will like. He returns quickly, rushing a little just to see his stupid, going-to-be-fine face, and they eat together, like old times, for once without the cloud of war hanging over them. 

After they fall into silence. Felix doesn’t want to leave, doesn’t know how to ask for it, doesn’t know if he needs to. He doesn’t; will he ever not be a couple steps behind Sylvain?

“Do you... do you want to stay here tonight?” He’s not as confident as Felix remembers him with girls, a little shy or nervous, and it’s completely disarming. “I promise not to make any trouble, Mercedes and Manuela won’t have a bad word to say about me. I just... I’m happy to see you today. More than usual.”

A little overwhelmed, he just nods. He’s sitting cross-legged at the foot of Sylvain’s bed, hand resting on his leg with the sheet between them, not really willing to be too far away. He nods again and —

“Felix, come here.” It’s a little commanding, a shiver running down his spine, and he moves up to the head of the bed. Sylvain reaches out and pulls him closer, arm strong around his waist. “What was that expression on your face just now?” He’s embarrassed but not in the way that makes him prickle up and pull away, in a way that makes him conscious that he’s seen. “There it is again. An actual smile?” Sylvain rests his other hand on Felix’s neck, thumb at the joint of his jaw, fingers strong around his nape. “Maybe just one or two bad words about me. You’re irresistible.”

He’s blushing hard now, flustered still in the newness of everything, skin hot under his hands. Sylvain kisses each corner of Felix’s mouth, intentional but lazy, open-mouthed and searing on his skin, then hard and fully on the lips. Over and over, sloppy, intimate, Felix sliding his hands up Sylvain’s back, careful to avoid his bandaged side, hungry for his skin as his mouth burns down his neck. Per promise though, Sylvain leaves one more scorching impression on Felix’s collarbone and then pulls their bodies apart. It’s an effort for both of them and Felix keeps his hands fastened in Sylvain’s. 

“I’ll be good now,” he says, and in fact his eyes look a little tight, as though his side is paying the price. “I just can’t help myself. It’s been such a long time, we have so much to make up for.”

“As long as you’re not planning on keeling over from this wound for a while we have as much time as we want.”

“You’re not going anywhere?”

Felix shrugs. “Who knows where any of us are going after this coronation? It’ll be a new world, Dimitri and the professor, the kingdom and the church.”

“As long as you’re not going anywhere tonight I think I can live with that.” And he doesn’t. Pressed close to Sylvain’s uninjured side, hemmed in by the small bed from their school days, Felix doesn’t know if he wants to go anywhere else ever again.

* * *

Fhirdiad is still celebrating a month after the coronation, loud and long into the night, and Felix is with the city thanks to Ingrid and Ashe. As much as he wants to stay in, worn out from the political settling of the Kingdom more than he ever had been during the war, they drag him out. 

“It’s amazing, Felix,” Ashe had said earlier in the day, when he’d apparently been more amenable, earnest as ever. “Everyone is so generous when we go out.”

Ingrid had laughed. Felix didn’t remember her ever being this relaxed as kids, eyes shining the way they did when she was looking at Ashe. “Well in fairness we did essentially save all of Fodlan,” she had said. “I’d want to be on our good side too.”

Everyone in the tavern they’re at is currently on Felix’s good side. Ashe and Ingrid seem to know all the ins and outs of having fun in Fhirdiad, and they’re even doing a pretty good job of making him forget his upcoming departure to Fraldarius lands to take over the dukedom left vacant by his father’s death. 

Ashe threads his arm through Felix’s. “Ready?”

Felix nods, holding his shot glass up to clink with Ashe’s. “I hope so.” They toss the liquor back, arms interlocked, Ingrid cheering with a few other people at the bar, and then they laugh. He’s never had time or motivation to do this before but with Ashe somehow it’s fun. And he’s right; people do seem generous and happy to see them. He’s blown away by how hugely Ingrid is smiling. 

“Want another one?” Ashe calls, him and Felix by far the most popular attractions in the place. Felix nods again. Another shot heading their way down the bar, crossing arms again, Felix smiling and laughing, everything-ish right with the world. They each take the shot, liquor burning down Felix’s throat, Ashe grinning at him as they set their glasses down. Ashe can hold his alcohol surprisingly well, although even with his somewhat limited abilities of perception Felix can tell that he’s feeling the impact, maybe not quite as much as he is but getting there. They’re laughing now, even Mercedes and Annette across the bar from them smiling and happy, and Felix’s mind is turned off for the first time in a while. Not all the way, maybe, but enough. 

Eventually the four other blue lions crowd him into a booth, playing some kind of drinking game that has Felix reeling by the time they leave the tavern. Does that mean he’s bad at it? Maybe. Ingrid and Mercedes each loop an arm through his on the walk back to the main keep where they’re all staying.

“Do you think Dimitri will let us live here forever?” Mercedes’ voice is as soft as ever, even if she’s slurring a little. 

Ingrid scoffs, not in her usual, annoying way. “I think most of us have a new set of responsibilities to go home to.” Even with the light edge of the alcohol it still sounds like she’s lecturing. “But probably you can stay if you want! There’s not many of us who will though.”

“As long as I’m with Annie, not alone,” Mercedes says cheerfully, turning and waving at Annette who’s a little behind them in lock step with Ashe. “What will you two do? Ingrid, I’m sure your father has some ridiculous marriage waiting for you.” 

Ingrid shakes her head. “Nope! My father finally gave up on me being some married noblewoman.” At this, Mercedes drops Felix’s arm to movie behind him and hug Ingrid around the neck. She laughs. “I know, right? So my goal is to be a knight for the Kingdom. Dimitri will have me, I think, I just have to set things in order at home soon.”

“That sounds wonderful!” Mercedes is even more enthusiastic than usual. Felix’s head is spinning a little bit, propped up somewhat by Ingrid’s sturdy arm in his. Mercedes links her arm through his again but on Ingrid’s side, stacking their elbows in the crook of his. “And what about you, Felix? What’s waiting for you after we’re done getting drunk in the city?”

Felix searches the recesses of his mind. Tonight, warm bed and hopefully no hangover. Tomorrow... “Back to start being Duke Fraldarius. Someone has to do it.” 

Mercedes and Ingrid both frown at him. They’re getting close to the castle now. Ashe and Annette are right behind them, all moving fairly slowly. “By yourself?” asks Mercedes. 

He shrugs, good natured. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“You won’t be by yourself!” Ashe, put together despite the amount of alcohol they both consumed. “I mean Sylvain will probably go there with you, right?”

“Uh. I don’t...”

“He would if you wanted him to!” Ingrid this time, leaning on his arm, happy. “Ashe, where are you planning to go when all the celebrating is over?”

The conversation drifts, Felix’s half-impaired brain moving in a loop. He hasn’t even really considered what will happen between him and Sylvain after this time is over, when they’re not held together by circumstance. He might go back to skirt-chasing, leaving Felix to fend for himself in his dukedom. That seems like the most likely outcome. Sylvain isn’t one for staying in place. 

When they reach the keep, the girls split off and head towards the quarters where they’re staying, leaving Felix and Ashe in a wash of the echoes of their giggling. Ashe smiles at him. “You know, I always knew you were a great man, Felix, but I didn’t know you could be a fun one.”

As always, something about Ashe makes him want to be kind. He’s less prickly tonight anyway. “Must be your influence,” he counters. “It’s not in my nature.”

“Maybe!” Ashe is cheerful, looping his arm through Felix’s as they meander their way back to their rooms. “Hey, I’m sorry if what I said earlier was uncomfortable. I just assumed that you two would...” 

“It is what it is.” Shoulders rise and fall a little heavier. “We haven’t had a conversation about it.”

“You should soon. Maybe not tonight,” he adds, grinning and twirling his finger around his ear to signify loopiness. “I just think... I mean even tonight, we were having a great time and I think you were too, but your mind was somewhere else at the same time. Don’t separate.”

Ashe drops him off safely at his room, waving good bye for a ridiculous percentage of his walk down the hallway, Felix waving too until he’s out of sight. Once he’s alone, what he’s had to drink hits him a little harder and he leans against the door, sliding down to sit on the floor. The room spins slowly, afterglow of the night settling around him, stupid half smile on his face. 

It must be at least a few minutes later that the knock sounds. He doesn’t answer.

“Felix Fraldarius, if you are drunk in there and don’t let me in to see it tonight will be the night we keep that promise.”

More knocking. He’s not going away. Felix sighs and heaves himself up, using the trunk at the foot of his bed for leverage. “I’m not drunk,” he calls, flinging open the door in a way that might undercut his credibility. 

Sylvain’s eyes light up immediately. “Oh yes you are. Let me in right now.” He pushes past without waiting for permission, settling himself on the very trunk that had been his assistant a moment ago as Felix shuts the door behind them. He flops onto the bed, head swimming a little. “Ashe burst into my room accidentally instead of his, it took me a minute to convince him that he was in the wrong place. He was already halfway undressed, you should have seen him. He told me you were out together and I just had to hope you were in the same state.”

He rolls his eyes. “How do you do this so often?”

“Do you feel bad?”

Shakes his head. “No. I actually feel... good. Happy actually. I said actually twice.”

Sylvain smiles at him, reaches up from the trunk to grab his hand. “Good.”

“Will you stay here and talk to me for a while? To make sure I don’t die?”

“You won’t die,” he says, “but I’ll stay as long as you want.”

He takes a moment, letting the warmth of Sylvain’s hand seep into him. “Sylvain, did you ever resent me for my Crest?”

He laughs. “What? What made you think of that?”

Shrugs. “I was just thinking about how Glenn used to be when he would come back to the estate. Made me think of Miklan and everything. We’ve never really talked about it.”

He’s thoughtful for a moment. “I guess I could have been. You and Glenn never had to have any conflict over it since you both were born with one. But mostly what I saw about your experience was that for your father it didn’t matter one way or the other, he had his favorite and that was that. I felt bad for you. In a way, I had it easy — all I had to do to be my family’s favorite was already inside me from the day I was born.” Another pause. “Did you ever resent me for the way my family treated me?”

Felix shakes his head, then shuts his eyes and groans. He’s dizzy even lying down. “I don’t think so. Maybe a little. Most of the time I just felt sick over Miklan. But sometimes I guess I did feel jealous that your parents cared about you. I had to try so hard just to get my father to notice me at all, usually to punish me or compare me to Glenn. But it’s not like it was your fault.”

“What happened with your father, Felix... it was messed up. I know Dimitri feels terrible about it still. He didn’t want it to happen.”

“I guess I wish he had wanted to be close to me when he was dying.” He’s never really consciously put together the pieces of everything he’s had roiling beneath the skin since the war had started. It doesn’t feel good. “I hate that I can’t let it go. I hate that I’m still mad at Dimitri, it’s not his fault. We should never have been pitted against each other.”

“Things will be better,” he says. “Peace and forgiveness come with time.”

“I’m not like you, Sylvain. I’m not... good. I can’t deal with things the way you can, I never have. Even as kids you always had to step in and stop me from getting in fights. You and Ingrid had to work hard to keep me in line.” 

“You just feel everything so deeply. You are good, you’re just a lot softer than you like to let on.” He’s stroking Felix’s hand with his thumb now; he likes it, it’s grounding through the haze his head is swimming in. “I like that about you. More going on than meets the eye.”

“Thanks.” Warm and inviting and too far away. “Come sit up here with me.”

“You’re not really sitting,” Sylvain laughs.

“Then come lie next to me.” And he does, letting go of his hand to haul himself up onto Felix’s bed, stretching himself alongside him. Felix pulls himself closer, trying not to move too much and upset the equilibrium of his head, letting Sylvain throw an arm over his hips and tuck one leg between his, hooking over his thigh. Forehead pressed to his temple, hair mingling together where Felix’s is loose, warm all over now and weighed down. “Thanks.”

He chuckles, throat husky, lips brushing his cheek as he answers. “I should be thanking you. I still don’t totally understand how this is actually happening. It feels like something I’m dreaming that I’ll wake up from, and it will be five years ago and I’ll be back to chasing girls and getting yelled at by Ingrid and feeling like you’d never like me the way I liked you.”

“I wish I had known myself sooner. You’ve always been better at this kind of thing than I have.”

“We’re here now,” Sylvain says. The hand at the end of the arm across Felix flattens on his stomach, hot through the thin fabric of his shirt. “How’s your head?” 

He shrugs. “I don’t feel like I’m dying anymore. Lying down is helping.”

“Back to the usual mean and unsociable Felix in no time, huh?”

“I try not to be. My nature is rude, I can’t help it.” He’s breathing a little hard as Sylvain’s hand circles his stomach, sometimes catching the hem of his shirt and removing the barrier between them enough to let his fingers graze Felix’s bare skin. “That uh... I like that.”

“Like what?” He knows.

“You doing that, I like it.”

“Doing what?” Of course he knows.

“Uh... touching me like that. Just don’t stop.”

Sylvain doesn’t, instead sliding his still-flat palm under Felix’s shirt completely. His hand is big against Felix’s torso, outsized almost, overwhelming maybe. But Felix rises to his touch, back arching a little bit to meet him and he groans.

“Damn it, Felix, you are so...” Loss for words. “Have you ever done this before? Been with somebody?”

He blushes. “Do we have to talk about that now?” His voice is so low it’s almost a growl. “Does it matter?”

“I’m just surprised, you’re so... it seems like you know what you’re doing.”

“Well, I don’t,” he says, trying hard to get cohesive words out through the softening edge of his buzz and the increasing heat flooding his body, pooling in his stomach, streaming up to his brain and fogging the glass. 

“You’re... appealing,” Sylvain says finally, palm pressing down hard against Felix’s skin, all over his torso now and Felix is writhing under him. “Like something I want to eat.”

“Get it over with then,” he snaps. “You drive me crazy.”

“Get what over with? Eating you?” Drifting lower now, lazy, teasing. “What a weird thing to ask for.”

“If this room wasn’t spinning like a top I’d pin you down and kill you myself.”

“Wish you would.” Sylvain winks. Then his face turns serious, stilling for a minute. “Do you... do you want to do this tonight?”

Is there anything Felix wants more, at this moment, than to _do this_ with Sylvain? “Yes.”

“Okay.” Sylvain pulls his hand back, disentangling from Felix and rising from the bed, and it’s cold where he left him. “I’ll be right back, I have some things I have to grab if we’re doing this. Why don’t you think about it while I’m gone and make sure everything is okay for you, and we’ll go from there. No pressure.” He smiles, real, and leaves, shutting the door behind him. 

Felix sighs, blood still pooled in the pit of his stomach, and stands, pulling himself up by his bed frame. He’s unsteady for a moment but surprisingly his head clears quickly and he doesn’t feel nearly as dizzy as he tugs his shirt over his head, tossing it into his hamper for whenever the next chance to do laundry is. His trousers come next, leaving him not quite naked but naked enough. He suddenly has the wherewithal to feel nervous. This is Sylvain, childhood friend, leader of his life, always a couple steps ahead and now more than ever. Could he really want this? Could he ever hope to make him happy? Would he know how?

He takes a sip from an old glass of water on the desk in his room, swirling it around his mouth slowly before swallowing. It’ll happen sooner or later. He’s still standing at the desk, unaware but framed in the moonlight from the high window, when Sylvain returns a moment later. Felix doesn’t have a chance to see what he sets down on the end table before Sylvain is on him, literally, overwhelming him with his size as he grabs him roughly by the wrists, kissing him hard and fast. Blood pounds in Felix’s ears, he pushes against Sylvain’s hands encircling him to tug his shirt over his head, and when Sylvain moves in again to kiss his neck, hot and wet, his eyes are burning with a fire that lights Felix’s nerves ablaze. 

They don’t end up trying right away. Felix gets nervous, chickens out maybe, nauseous from the drinking possibly, but Sylvain backs down and they go to bed together like it’s normal. When Felix wakes in the middle of the night, back pressed against Sylvain with one of his hands dangling over his hip and the other one wrapped around his neck, he knows the meaning of _too late to turn back_. And he’s waking Sylvain, tugging at his hair until he’s pressing his lips to his ear, grip on his neck tightening, and then they’re moving together and it hurts a little but heals a lot. And when he wakes up, first again, in the early morning, Felix can’t stay and accept reality and his own feelings so he slips out of bed, dresses silently, and leaves.

* * *

Days later he’s trying to leave again, packing his things for his not-so-triumphant return to the Fraldarius dukedom he never wanted. His uncle has been watching over things while Felix has been fighting and so far, despite his wariness about Rodrigue’s brother, things have been handled well. Maybe it could stay with him forever, maybe he could take off and be a mercenary like the professor, knowing his fighting could have a purpose now. He shakes his head for his own benefit only — a pipe dream that could never come true. He has responsibilities now, they all do. 

It’s starting to get light outside, and Felix looks out his window for a moment as he rolls up another set of clothing to toss into his bag. Fhirdiad is still sleeping for the most part, a few enterprising merchants setting up in the side streets, some night watch soldiers wrapping up their patrols along the city walls, but otherwise it’s quiet. Too quiet. It would be nice to have some company as he gets ready to leave for good, to separate from the people he’d never thought he’d come so close to, but for some reason his guardedness hadn’t let him even announce that today would be the day.

Still, as if someone somewhere heard his wish, there’s a knock on his door, and he has a feeling by the loudness of the reverberation in the frame that he knows who it is. He sighs, cracks it open just enough to look up at Dimitri. 

“Yes?”

“Can I come in?” Could he say no to the king? He slides out of the way and he steps through, taking up a colossal amount of space as Felix shuts the door behind him. “The professor mentioned to me that they thought you might be returning home soon.”

“You probably don’t have to call them that now that you’re engaged,” he says, and Dimitri actually blushes a little. “What could possibly have tipped them off?”

He shrugs. “They understand you.” A twist in the muscle of his heart; his father had said the same thing, one of their last conversations before he died. “I wanted to make sure we spoke in person first if you were planning to leave.”

“Well, here we are.” He grabs a bottle of salve off the desk, the one he keeps rubbing into his Thoron scar as if it might ever help, rolling it up in a shirt to keep the glass from shattering in his bag. “What did you want to speak about?”

“Although I don’t think an old friend needs to have a specific topic in mind to visit you, I actually have two things I wanted to say.” Dimitri is almost incurably formal now that the coronation has passed, always in head of state mode, never back on earth with the rest of them, but it suits him in some ways. “The first is long overdue. I know we’ve discussed this before but... I can’t express how sorry I’ve been for all these years about everything that happened with your father, and Glenn. I know things were difficult for you, I know they always have been, and I... I should have been more sensitive to the conflict between you and Rodrigue. I could see it happening I just... didn’t do enough to mitigate it. I think every day about how much I regret that I came between you two in any way.” His voice softens. “Not least of which because it put a rift between us that I can’t seem to cross.”

“It’s not your fault,” Felix says shortly. He isn’t packing anymore, hands still buried in his bag where he’s placed the salve, unmoving. “I know it’s not. I’m sorry I can’t... that I haven’t been able to move past it yet. It’s my father, he still has me in his grip from beyond the grave. I’m sorry Dimitri. With time, maybe.”

“That’s more than I could have hoped for,” he says. He seems genuine. “I did have one more thing to say if you’ll hear me out.” Felix nods, again unsure why he’s asking when refusing the king of Fodlan seems like an impossibility. “Hopefully less loaded but I still don’t think you’ll want to hear it. I think you should say goodbye to everyone before you go. I know it’s painful, I’ve been dreading you all leaving and not being able to see you daily anymore. I’ve really come to rely on you all, and... and love you like a family. I hope you feel the same way and will give your brothers and sisters the gift of a farewell.”

“I’m going to the Fraldarius territory, not the realm of darkness.” He’s only cutting because he knows Dimitri is right. “I’ll see everyone again whenever I please. Fodlan isn’t that big and as far as I know we don’t have any Claudes on our hands, running off to Almyra or wherever else.”

“You’re right, but you know it won’t be the same. And who knows, there might be some decisions left for you to make that you won’t even know about until you have those conversations.” Felix isn’t even sure what this means and Dimitri looks a little uncomfortable, so he doubts pressing for an explanation will get him anything more. 

“If the king commands it, then I’ll interrupt everyone’s day before I leave,” he acquiesces sarcastically. “Does this conversation count as our fond farewell?”

“Almost,” he says, and before Felix can ask what else is required he steps across the room and crushes him in a hug, arms very strong around him, clearly trying to hold himself back. “Felix, I may miss you most of all, my friend,” he says, and his heart softens in his chest a little. He puts his arms around him, wrapping them around his waist, patting his back a little awkwardly. Maybe with time. He lets go and his eye looks a little wet. “Thank you for always reminding me of who I am. Please do not be a stranger.”

Felix nods, and Dimitri bows a little to him and leaves. He finishes packing, wondering if he’ll end up following his request, which felt half like a command, but before he consciously decides he’s out the door, leaving his bags on his bed like a promise to come back. 

Ingrid and Ashe are up early with a morning cup of tea when he finds them. Ashe bounds up to hug him and Ingrid wraps her arms around both of them, both making him promise to visit them in Fhirdiad soon after they start working as knights for the kingdom together. They seem happy, eyes glowing, and he’s sad to leave them. He will come back.

Dedue he finds quickly, never hard to seek out, always somewhere near Dimitri even now. His handshake is firm and respectful, and as usual neither of them are effusive. Felix can appreciate this when so much of his morning will be spent with more emotional partings and he leaves with a smile on his face. 

Mercedes and Annette both cry as they embrace him, Mercedes on her way back in from an early shopping trip, Annette sleepily heading down to breakfast. Mercedes kisses his cheek, happy to hear that he’ll be back in Fhirdiad soon to see her working in the church with their old professor. Annette isn’t sure yet exactly what she’s doing, but as he lifts her small frame up and spins her around one last time, she giggles louder than ever. She’ll be wherever Mercedes is, no doubt about it. The capital of the Kingdom is almost a one-stop shop for catching up with old school friends. 

Almost. 

It takes an irritating amount of time to find Sylvain. He’s at the top of one of the towers in the keep, looking out over the city, hands clasped behind his head in the light of the blooming morning. He doesn’t notice Felix immediately and he takes a second to just take him in. Things have been a little uncomfortable since the night they spent together, Felix holding him at arm’s length, scared of what happened and what he feels and what uncertainty is in their future together or apart. Sylvain... he isn’t sure what he’s feeling. Maybe he’s relieved that Felix hasn’t been so close to him. It hurts to think but maybe. Maybe, maybe. 

“Sylvain!” he calls from the door of the tower, closing it loudly as if he had just arrived there. “There you are.”

He whirls around, clearly surprised, but then his eyes light up and Felix suddenly feels that everything could go right after all. “Felix, hey. It’s been a little while, I thought maybe I scared you off.” His grin doesn’t exactly fill his face like it usually does. He rubs the side with the Thoron scar.

“It wasn’t you that scared me.” He leaves it at that. Sylvain can usually connect the dots. “What on earth are you doing up here? It took me forever to find you.”

He frowns. “I just like being up here in the morning, seeing the city. Why were you looking for me?”

_I’m sorry_. _I didn’t mean to leave, I didn’t want to leave_. _I don’t know how to say goodbye_. “I’m leaving.” Lead balloon dropping in between them. Sylvain freezes. “I have to go back and take over for my uncle. His good luck can’t keep going forever. My father would have wanted it. My last chance to please him.”

“Oh.” It comes out in an exhale, as if someone had punched him in the stomach. “Okay. You’re leaving today?”

He nods. “It’ll take a day or two to get back.”

“Are you... going by yourself?” 

Felix can’t look at him. “I was planning on it. Unless... I guess... I wasn’t sure if you were going back to House Gautier and would want to ride with me. I didn’t know if you wanted to see me at all.”

“I always want to see you. I’m not joking, Felix, it’s been making me crazy trying to give you space the last few days. I want to...”

They’re both almost shaking, less than a foot apart from each other but afraid to close the gap. “Sylvain, I... I’m sorry, I was... I’m still...”

“Just tell me. I don’t want to be out of time.” Sylvain’s voice is strained, almost pleading, it hurts to hear it.

It feels like a voice is shouting inside Felix’s head, overwhelming him, he and Sylvain finally at the same step on the path. “Can I... can I take your hand? I just want to be able to say this. Give me strength.” Sylvain seizes him, hard, both hands clamping around one of Felix’s, his other buried in his hair, gripping it to give himself a sensation to focus on. “I’m scared of what’s... happening to me. What’s been happening to me for five years that I’m just barely starting to understand. For so long all I knew was being angry and hurt and fighting and killing, and then when we saw each other again... it was like everything moved out from under me. I wanted to protect you, be near you, wanted you to...” He’s half-choking on his words, clenching any part of Sylvain’s hands he can hold on to. His face must be red with embarrassment, it feels hot inside his head. “But I knew, I know, it couldn’t last and I’m scared of how that makes me feel too. But I’m —“

“Why does it have to end?” He’s grateful to be cut off and Sylvain looks earnest, maybe even a little afraid himself. “I’ve said this before, I want it to sink in. I have been wanting this, wanting you, for a long time. Too long. It took me forever to make you understand.” Lopsided smile that sends Felix reeling the way it always does. “So, how do we keep it together? Do I go with you to the Fraldarius territory, do you go with me to Gautier?”

“I don’t... I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you, or can’t you imagine still that I want to be with you, go where you go, live and die with you just like we promised when we were kids?”

Time slows around him, Fhirdiad disappears, everything vanishes except Sylvain and their hands clutching each other and the path spilling out in front of them. “You... you don’t want to leave?”

“Did you get hit on the head? I’m in love with you, Felix. I have been for a long time. If you go back to be the duke on your own I’ll just follow you there. If you run away from all your responsibilities and become a mercenary I’ll pick up a sword for the first time in my life and fight by your side. If you, I don’t know, decide to stay here in Fhirdiad and be Dimitri’s retainer then he’ll get two for the price of one. I can figure anything else out.”

“Oh... okay. Okay.” He’s smiling and Sylvain is kissing him and the sun is shining down on them and the city is bustling below them and the planets align. “Okay. So then... maybe you’ll go with me to see my uncle?”

“I will. And I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to tell me you love me,” he adds, winking. 

Felix shakes his head, tugging at his hand to lead him down the tower stairs. “You really are the biggest fool in Fodlan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to everyone who expected a much sexier story based on the description.


End file.
